In 2015, the Arthur M. Anderson, loaded with iron ore on a passage across Lake Erie, got stuck in ice for five days near Conneaut, Ohio.

“It couldn’t get in to Conneaut and then it couldn’t get out, and it had a full load,” said Tom Rayburn, director of Environmental & Regulatory Affairs of the Lake Carriers’ Association in Cleveland. The trade association promotes the interests of operators of cargo vessels on the Great Lakes.

Ice causes a lot of problems for Great Lakes ships, from delays at locks to damage to ships.

“Every once in a while they’ll get a hole in them,” Rayburn said.

That’s a big problem – 20 percent of Great Lakes cargo moves in the winter. And no easy-to-understand, publicly accessible forecast for Great Lakes ice exists.

But University of Michigan researchers are changing that. They have a $10,000 grant from the Graham Sustainability Institute to create an ice forecast that’s as usable as the weather forecasts on television.

Such a service is “absolutely important,” Rayburn said.

And the necessary data and ice forecasting models already exist.

“The technique is ready to go,” said Ayumi Fujisaki-Manome, who researches sea and lake ice at the university.

A potential problem is that users may be challenged to decipher the information the technique produces, said Fujisaki-Manome, the principal investigator on a project working on a translation.

Her team is creating a forecast for the Great Lakes Operational Forecast System to be published and maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Similar challenges have already been overcome.

“A good example of this would be a weather forecast,” said Eric Anderson, a researcher at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor. A weather forecast is technical, scientific data presented in a way the average person can digest and use.

The team will use social science techniques like focus groups and surveys to tailor the forecast to the needs of the Coast Guard and the shipping industry, the groups that will use it most.

“It’s a much more rigorous process of matching user needs and gathering feedback from users,” said Devin Gill, the stakeholder engagement specialist at the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research at the University of Michigan.

One feature the shipping industry is interested in is specificity, Rayburn said. A forecast that’s too broad won’t be useful. One that is too specific could be overwhelming and unwieldy. Whether the data will be mapped, plotted or raw is up for discussion, Anderson said.

Using focus groups and surveys is different from what Gill calls the more typical “loading dock”approach.

That’s when scientists ignore users until they deliver the finished product, she said. Instead, this team is answering important questions about the ice forecast before that point.

“What does it mean to be good? What does it mean to be accurate?” Anderson asked. Focus groups will provide a complete and nuanced answer.

One facet of the forecast up for discussion is ice thickness, Anderson said. Researchers need to know how specific that forecast should be as ice breakers and commercial vessels manage ice at very different thicknesses.

The research needed for a translated forecast slows the process. An experimental version should be available by 2020 and a final product by 2021, Anderson said. The team thinks the careful approach is necessary.

But ice changes fast.

Fujisaki-Manome estimates Lake Superior’s ice cover increased by 40 percent during the week of the January polar vortex, or about five times faster than normal.

This unpredictability means the Coast Guard can’t efficiently deploy its ice breakers, Rayburn said. He points to the need for a new ice breaker as evidence that wintertime shipping needs additional help dealing with ice. Congress authorized funds for a new ship, though he worries it won’t be built.

Whatever form the forecast takes, it will be better because of including the users early in the translation process, Gill said. And that early inclusion could spill over into the application of other research.

“We’re hoping to continue to improve and to expand this program, and I’m really excited about that,” she said.